Common Sense is Not Common

Wikipedia: "common sense equates to the knowledge and experience which most people allegedly have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have.

I guess should is the operative word here. It seems to me that it is sorely lacking in this world.

• A mother and father leave their 8 year old, 6 year old, and 3-week old infant alone while they go out drinking for several hours. The mother returns intoxicated and unfit to care for the children. The father says the mother told him there was a babysitter.
• A man makes a pipe bomb in the name of "fireworks" and an 11 year old boy riding by on his bike is blasted with it, sustains life-threatening and definitely life-altering injuries described as "war-like injuries."
• A father takes his 2 year old in the car and leaves him there while he see Dark Knight, a movie, at 10:00 at night. Now I'll grant that mistakes happen but in the cases I'm talking about, there seems to be a big lack of common sense.
• People are texting while driving! You think cell phones are bad? This is just plain stupid. Pedestrians are also sustaining injuries and death. They text while walking and run into poles, fall into holes, trip over curbs and get hit by cars.
  

Thomas Paine in his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense: ""A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom."

This is another story altogether - how wrong has become right just because it is common.

Ronald Reagan has been criticized (of course, he was in politics, was the President, and was in the spotlight), praised, loved and hated. I believe he was a great leader who had common sense. Often greatness is unappreciated. Here are some interesting quotes:

"Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose."- Ronald Reagan

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan

"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong."
- Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress." - Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

"It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it" - Ronald Reagan

"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards; if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book." - Ronald Reagan

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."- Ronald Reagan

"If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."- Ronald Reagan